Games that had a good premise, but fell short of being a great game

One game that comes to mind is Sakura Wars. Loved the animation, the setting, the characters, and also the hybrid between visual novel and mech combat. But the part where it falls flat is the mech combat. It was so derivative and overly simplistic. If only they had worked on that and made it good, this game would've been a real winner for me. Hopefully it's addressed in the sequel.

How about you, SW? What games in your opinion had a good premise, but fell short of being a great game?

Platinumed the game and I agree on Sakura Wars. I enjoyed the sim part a lot but combat definitely needs serious rework. Its quite a quality release visually too lots of love went into Tokyo and the cutscenes.

Personally, its Persona 5. Loved both the original and Royal edition but the game really falls short in writing department compared to P3 & P4. The writing was so mediocre I immediately notices cause the dialogues not flowing as smooth as previous games. Probably due to them going with a different translation team idk but P5 is definitely my least liked Persona game by wide margin.

Too Human

Five club, Spiderman, Watch Dogs.

@BassMan: Immediately thought of Too Human when seeing the thread.

I'd have to go with Halo Finite on this one.

Definitely watchdogs it had the ingredients to be a great game bit just fell short. I also really enjoyed the order 1886 but fell just short the length didn't help but felt it had a really interesting story and looked great graphically on a base PS4.

Destiny as a franchise. Turned out to be nothing more than a currency simulator.

Alpha Protocol

Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, Ghost of Tsushima, Ryse!

Cyberpunk. Needed another year or so of polish. If the bugs had been worked out, and some of the systems that would have enabled emergent gameplay were working, it could have been amazing.

I still think it was a "good" game, at least on pc where the performance issues weren't as bad, but it could have been epic if the citizens had better AI, the driving was better and the police system was better, etc.

The original Assassin's Creed back in 2007 springs to mind.

An Xbox 360 launch game called Gun. The ground work for a great game was there, but it ended up being a bit shallow. It was an open world action game with nothing to do in it.

The order 1886 for sure. Looked great but the game itself wasn’t as fun to play.

Spiderman?.............how so?

Good one. Probably some of the most well thought out dialogue trees in regards to choice and consequence of any game ever made, but everything in between is a mess.

Geist on Gamecube immediately springs to mind. An FPS where you play as a spirit who possesses hosts and then can use their abilities. Unfortunately it was a late gen game that played like an early gen one. Loose controls, inconsistent framerate, bad AI. Not broken, in fact it plays about as well as Red Faction, but by 2005 that wasn't gonna cut it.

Wet. Combine Max Payne, Prince of Persia, and Kill Bill. This should print money. Unfortunately it all feels kinda sloppy, and the boss fights are completely QTEs. To be clear, this is a really good game that I have played through multiple times, it just needed a sequel to work out some kinks and generally polish things up. But that never came to be.

Mafia 3 great setting, characters and story but man this game fell off a cliff after the first couple of missions the repetitive mission design was so lazy and got boring fast. If they just just had story based missions throughout the whole game instead of the repetitive loop of taking over gang warehouses and bosses this game would of been great.

As of recent its Ghostwire. its starting as good. unique setting. but then become repetetive. I liked it as start for first few hours then got bored when doing same thing over and over again.

Lots of good games on here.

Have to go with Alpha Protocol. The idea of a game inspired by modern espionage fiction such as James Bond, Jason Bourne, Tom Clancy (and throw in a little Die Hard for some action-comedy) coupled with action-RPG mechanics is really great.

Unfortunately it suffered from what was then Obsidian's greatest issue, and that is quality control. But it did so much right, it could have been one of the greatest games of all time.

the problem with alpha protocol is being RPG. if it has not been RPG and be splinter cell or hitman style stealth game with some action. it could be great.

Honestly what else did you want from Spider-Man ? It was one of the best super hero games ever.

That's a good example. It had so much potential.

There are two that comes to mind for me: Tales of Vesperia (360) and Rogue Galaxy. Both are interesting and kept me along for the whole ride, but they both fall short when it comes to the writing.

For Tales of Vesperia, both the plot and character development suffers. We don't see the characters develop and mature through the game, instead, much of the questions that are brought up that could be legitimate character flaws are never delved into further. There is one time that I am reminded of: Yuri killing. There was a part where Yuri kills or lets a person die without helping them and he tries to keep it a secret until the main female character finds out not too long afterward, and where the story plays it as though he may have crossed the line and the question of morality is coming into question, it immediately ignores it and continues on. This happens a few times as well in the game Karol and the girl with the goggles on for me. Not only this, the plot should've came to an end when you fought the guy before the final boss. The plot drags on after that and the reasons for fighting the final boss feels flimsy at best. With all of this being said, I do have the Definitive Edition and I am taking it a bit slower to see if I missed anything plotwise. I haven't gotten back to the game, but I will eventually.

Rogue Galaxy is more so a plot problem. The plot doesn't really start until hours later, and when it does it steps hard on the gas and does not let up. Not only this, it has a problem of either being predictable or not staying long enough on important plot points or topics.

think I gotta agree with this. something about these games just feels exploitative and hollow

Belden ring. They made it open world to jump on bandwagon. It only made the game extra long, boring and repetitive. On top of that its buggy af. I'm starting to think the positive reviews only came from group think.

Gt7...massive milk job at its finest. I'm actually impressed with sony and how they were able to milk cow tits so hard and keep a straight face. I saw at one point it took 90 hours to grind one car. But you could buy the car for $160. So basically you could grind real life in a min wage job, in the shittiest work to rule state like Alabama where they pay you like 8 $ per hour, and come our ahead 70 hours of time.

Of course horizon too, which just flopped a massive 8/10. The cows hyped this up for years. Sad.

@blaznwiipspman1: Oh so a long game is a negative now. Seven hours linear experience is what this NFT enjoyer wants in his life. Infinite went open world as well, and its so laughable compared to ER that it feels like a student project they made on a weekend. I mean, ffs the game has ONE BIOME! Holy shit lol just laughable, especially for something that took six years and is a flagship from MS. But it gave us memes, so i am grateful for Microsoft/343i.

@hardwenzen: still getting triggered over Belden ring. Not everyone likes the game get over it, and the complaints about it are legitimate. They went open world for the sake of going open world, and made things repetitive. The world is full of open space too. Infinite is 30 hours plus when you do the side missions, and it's good there's only one biome, they keep things simple and don't recycle assets again and again like fromsoft does.

Oh yeah, how are Belden ring twitch numbers doing?

Triggered by what? Guaranteed GOTY. Best Open World game ever made. The most content packed singleplayer game ever made.

This game is such a massive hit that if Fromsoft made it exclusive for Sony like BB, this game alone would bury the Xbox.

And i still can't get over the fact that there's just one repetitive and ugly biome in Infinite. How stupid is this developer?

ive seen plenty of youtube videos, this game is boring af and repetitive. I swear the same boss keeps coming again and again. They should give you a horse and fast travel from the beginning so you can get through the boring empty space quicker.

The new biomes are coming with the seasonal updates, 343 is on it.

Stop. What you're describing about "boring af and repetitive" is the whole Halo Infinite. When they made this game, they had no vision nor inspiration. It was just a shit job they tought that they'd be able to bank on starving Halo fans. Too bad everyone left within a month. This is what happens when your plan was to milk fans and not create a quality video game (ER comes to mind) for people to enjoy for years, just like H2, H3, Reach.

far cry 2 immediately springs to mind. one of the most misjudged executions of a great idea in gaming history.

good choice. great ambitious premise, but the sloppy execution left it disappointingly missing the mark across so many key aspects. i was that frustrated with it at the time it prompted me to write a blog post on here back in 2010 when gs actually had users called alpha protocol and how NOT to make a great stealth game lol

It's a shame because the gunplay, the world, and overall presentation are well done. However, the missions, the disjointed story, and grindy/exploitative design really bring Destiny down. I honestly don't know how people keep playing it on a regular basis. It is just the same shit over and over with no worthwhile content to keep you engaged.

Evolve.

Could've been so good. Sucked so bad.

Totally came here to say this! Too Human premises was good but the combat is left to be desire. I really hate that Silicon Knights did this to themselves😢

(At least its now free to download from what I heard)

I love how Bungie's reason for leaving Halo was "to make something different". So they made Halo with grind and bad business practices. 👍

Lost Ark aside, Destiny 2 is probably the worst piece of shit I've played in a loooong time.

Too Human.

The IP was announced as a trilogy from the word go but a one game and done should tell you all you need to know.

Not a bad game but not Too good either. lol :P

Mirror’s Edge, allthough still a masterpiece 😉!

Shadow of Mordor could have been something great if not for all the BS.

Far Cry 2 immediately comes to mind.

When the saw the previews years, and years back, looked incredible. Was expecting something akin to an evolution of Stalker.

Then played it, mumbling voice acting, couldn't here wtf they were saying half the time, or cared. Terrible story. Half-baked mechanics. Boring level design. Boring exploration. The world just felt empty, running around getting spammed with bots.

Went back to it 3-4 times to see if I could reevaluate, maybe it was "me" just being a dong.

Na, it's shite.

Far cry 2 is masterpiece.

Its closest thing to STALKER during 7 gen or it was Ubisoft STALKER. it was more PC game than Crysis was.

incredible game.

I respect your opinion, however I think it is not good game.

Even first Far Cry more enjoyable.

Even Far Cry movie is more enjoyable.

first far cry was trash. it was ok for first few hours than going downhill.

by contrast FC2 is everything FC1 is not. FC1 is not even 0.001% of FC2 was.

Far cry 2 was immersive, atmospheric, you burn grass, the amazing weather effect, the realistic gunplay, how enemy react. in 2008 it was ahead of its time.

I'm not sure it fell short though. At the time, I think it was a great game. I think the problem is they ran out of ideas and each game since then had pretty much just been the same game reskinned. Future Assassin's Creed games never really added anything more than new characters and settings. Characters and settings now have no back story or any higher purpose to them, Desmond was killed off in a very anti-climatic way, and with it, any reason for ever being put into the animus outside of "ooh, let's see what vikings were like."

the problem with ac1 was the investigation loop and having to repeat the same activities over and over on the build up to an assassination. sit on a bench, eavesdrop, pickpocket someone in a crowd, catch the flag etc. back then climbing a tower to unlock the map was a new thing so that was a bit of a novelty, but the rest just felt like a waste of a good concept. you go to all that trouble to create a great new and fresh parkour concept in a beautiful vertical sandbox and those were the best ideas they came up with to gather intel. sit on a bench and hold button. follow a guy and hold button.

not a bad game, still memorable, but with a bit more variety and creativity in those recon missions it could've been much better. also the bloody horse, and having to ride it slowly between towns otherwise the templars would discover you and chase you down for... breaking the speed limit? that was annoying.

that's not the complement you think it is

Just cause,AC Valhalla, horizon zero dawn,CP77

Elden Ring :)

Indeed.

I remember really liking the first Assassin's Creed. Thought the platforming was a step down from Prince of Persia, but I understood they were going for something more realistic, and I enjoyed it overall. Really looked forward to AC2, and liked that game when it came as well, but even then, fatigue hit me before I finished the game. With AC3, I just wasn't interested anymore.

How many more AC games did they make after that? 17? It's insane how boring most gamers are.

Final Fantasy 15. The game started crazy good with its combat and exploration. But went spiral down midway to the game. Its still a decent game but it could have been better.

Not an original premise per say, but Back 4 Blood was placed on a pedestal and ready for an easy win but it ended up being the hottest turd of the last couple of years. They took some of the best elements of procedural generation, teamwork, infected mutants.....and flushed it all down the toilet. Seriously, I've never seen a game company f*ck up this badly. People defending the game are delusional.

Agreed. Flawed gem, though - first game I got all 1000 achievement points with.

Too Human... I was so in for that planned trilogy. I played through the game several times and really enjoyed it. That said, silicon knights were a mess.... They went from Eternal Darkness to Too Human, To suing Epic Games to bankruptcy. 😭